Ay unbound the thralls. They gasped and hissed as bolts and wires were loosened. Then, with the wagon rocking heavily as he mounted it, the hunter leaned over the servant until she stepped down in a reluctant retreat.

Bee did not argue at the prospect of surrendering one of her sisters in exchange for food and water. Instead, Ay watched closely as the child scooped up the largest of the maggoty offspring - Em, he thought she was called. Then, cradling the offspring in her arms and giving her one last farewell look, Bee offered her to the starving monsters. All the while, Ay kept his lance close at hand.

“Would have thought,” Aye croaked, then slurped back a wave of saliva, “You would want to keep that one.”

Bee did not stir at his remark. So he took the lash and directed the thralls to pull them away from the ruins. Tasting the air, Ay kept a careful eye on the cultists who watched them leave and the outskirts of the Oasis as the wagon rocked over sand and stone.

Before bundling herself back up in her blankets, the child seemed lost in her thoughts, keeping her remaining sisters close. Then, finally, Ay leaned forward and spoke to the thralls.

“Food and water, when we’re not followed.”

With pained noise, the thralls yanked on the reins, picking up pace as they neared crossroads at the border of the desert. They were finally back underway, reaching an open plain with only half-trodden paths out into the expanse.

Tucked away in the dark, Bee half dreamed of children swimming in the Oasis - their distant, collective sobs so different from the insectile hymns of the cultists. Again, the image of the zealot that maimed her returned with unsettling clarity. This time, it cowered in the mud beneath the hooves of a vast, fleshy creature. Its stone face could not contort; instead, it gasped and heaved with pain, its ancient sword unable to pierce the force that crushed it, shattering with a spray of blood and oil. Above, the titan waved a sensory array of fleshy tendrils, used to taste the air around it, before crouching and waiting for the Oasis’ settlement to burn, filling the sky with a column of black smoke.

The wagon thumped to a stop, and the entire carriage rattled and bobbed as Ay slid down to touch the sands. The heavy motion woke Bee. Bleary with fatigue and dry eyes straining, she peeked out into the midday heat. How long had she been under there? She felt damp with sweat and dizzy with thirst.

Ay was coiling around the front of the wagon. He reached into a bag and produced a fist full of biomass, shoving it into the faces of each thrall, one at a time. They seemed to have stopped out in the dunes. Bee couldn’t make out anything but glass and bright skies in any direction. No, not quite. A dark smudge of rising dust was low on the horizon, ahead, pillowing out high into the atmosphere.

“Water’s in those skins,” he croaked, pointing a clawed hand into the carriage. The child struggled upright before finding it and taking a desperate drink. Then, after her fill, she took her sisters, one at a time, and helped them guzzle their own share.

“Please... No,” the freak in the rigging gasped. Bee recognised her voice, the one who tried to convince her to let her free. “No, no. No, don’t make me eat that.”

Sorely, Bee leaned over the seats to see. Glowering down at them, she saw Ay take a fistful of meat and force it against her face until she chewed and swallowed.

“What’s wrong?” Bee asked.

“Doesn’t want to eat tumour,” Ay croaked, taking a water skin and forcing the broken and humiliated thralls to drink next.

“Why?” The child leaned closer and shouted over the thrall’s sobbing.

“Mutagens.”

“Oh.”

Deciding she didn’t care, Bee sat back amongst her sisters, squinted up to the blue sky. A lone scavenger hovered high above them, a spread of sharp wings so high as to be indistinct except for its bold silhouette. She grimaced and rubbed at the plates that made up her chest and shoulders before checking her ruined arm.

The sound of one of the thralls retching and trying to vomit made Bee feel nauseous. Bothered by it, the child leaned back to watch. Then, while ignoring the thrall, Ay slithered back up onto the wagon and took his seat.

“What’s her problem? She got some meat.”

“Too much mutagen, freaks spit it up,” Ay said before slurping back saliva in his beak, lifting the waterskin he held and taking a deep drink.

“Looks like meat to me.”

“It is. Mutagen in it, the meat.”

“Right.”

“Too much, they fill up with tumours and die.”

“Oh.” Bee blanched, looking down to the thralls. “How much?”

“Depends on the freak.”

“Ay, can I ask you something?”

The Hunter turned the lash, hissing as the thralls gathered their strength, then began to heave the wagon along the sands again.

“I mean, I know I just did, but...” Bee trailed off before clambering over and sitting next to him.

“What is it?”

“Back there, that one with the clothes, she told me some things.”

“Bet she did.”

“Do you know what the source is?”

His beak clacked before opening, wet eyes narrowing at the child.

“Yes,” he croaked. “It’s what they call an aug in our chests.”

“So it’s real?”

“Most of us have it.”

“So we don’t need to eat?”

“Need?” Ay tutted, focusing on the road again. “Don’t listen to them.”

“Why though?”

“There’s a difference,” Ay struggled, slurping again, “Between belief and reality.”

Bee struggled with that; all her attention turned to the massive hunter.

“What?” She eventually asked.

“Used to be Godly, faithful,” he croaked. “Not anymore.”

“Not anymore?”

“No. Most freaks are. When they don’t know, they guess, then delude themselves.”

“So the source isn’t real?”

“It’s real. The aug is real.” Ay clacked his beak again, hands tense on the reins as the conversation continued. Bee looked at his posture and wondered why he seemed to hate speaking so much.

“So what isn’t real?”

“What they think. Their way of thinking. They’re being taken advantage of.”

“By who?”

“Them?” Ay rumbled, gesturing back. “An obese freak, trying to grow, taking all the meat for himself. Anywhere else? Always someone. Look at those on top.”

“Always?”

Ay turned to Bee again, wet eyes staring down at her through a crack in his beak for a painfully long time. The child squirmed under his scrutiny, swallowing a lump in her throat and looking to the sands ahead, almost surrendering the conversation entirely before he spoke again.

“Freaks like your mother, cities make them: nobles, Gods, whatever.”

“What for?”

“The cities have all sorts of systems: repair, digestion, construction, defence.”

“Okay,” Bee said, eyes narrowing as she listened, trying to discern where he was going with this.

“Nobles are made by the cities to turn us against each other.”

“Why?”

“Keep numbers down. Stop us eating too much. Stop us growing too large.”

Bee sat there for a while, thinking about that. His resentment for her mother, for her by association, stung. Growing angry, she tried to hide it. It didn’t last. Speaking quietly, she said, “That can’t be true. What did my mother ever do to hurt you?”

Ay croaked into a laugh, body rocking.

“Work for them. Longer than... You could imagine, young as you are.”

“You hate them but you work for them?”

“That’s life. Get what I need. Get to survive.”

“You’re strong though. Aren’t you? Why do you need them?”

“Strong because I got what I needed.”

“Why do you still work for them then?” Bee asked in a subdued tone, half imagining the answer already.

“Because you always need more.”

“She said thinking like that’s immoral,” Bee offered, though, without any conviction, a thought offered up and discarded as quickly as it left her lips.

“That’s why she’s easy to control.”

Satisfied but miserable, the child heaved into a sigh, rubbing a hand over the sore, pink burns that covered her skin between her plates. Weak still, caught under the relentless daystar, Bee leaned aside and reached back for her blanket, dragging it over herself in the seat. Ay watched her hideaway in the chair, glanced back at her sisters, quietly bundled away, and fell into silent vigil as they neared the vast column of dust on the horizon.

He seems like the easy one, Bee kept to herself.